SCALE went well. Lots of people interested, as usual. Possy, Golgoj4, and I had a great time.

Basically, we took a very different tact when it came to marketing information, this time.

Instead of mowing down dead trees to turn into sheets of paper for our handouts, we managed to get a scanner from the SCALE people, and scanned each interested person's badge. I received a CSV file containing all that data, to send off one email message, which contained:

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Hello,

It's been a week since I saw you at SCALE, and now I finally have some time to put together the Welcome Packet that I promised you.

LinuxMCE is a comprehensive Smart Home platform, unifying:

* Lighting Control

* Media Control/Storage/Playback

* Climate Control

* A Security System

* And a Telecom system

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Contacting Us

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All in the same system, and all pieces are able to talk to each other, and interact with one another.

* USE THE WIKI. The Wiki is an extensive clearing house of information gathered from all of us using LinuxMCE. Use this information. If you have better information, add to it, make it better.

* USE THE IRC. We are constantly on it, and are the best bet if you want help immediately. If we are there, and we are available, we will help.

* OPTIMIZE YOUR NETWORK INTERCONNECT. LinuxMCE is an I/O bound application, the better your network is optimized, the better it will run overall. Use Jumbo packets, use good switches, use good cable (Cat-5E, Cat-6A,Cat-7), and use gigabit ethernet. Minimize the number of devices on WIFI.

* USE RS232 or ETHERNET for connecting and talking to your Audio/Video equipment, if possible. If not, use a USB UIRT for IR transmission, and use Xantech 286-D emitters for greater reliability of transmitting IR signals.

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Types of Systems you can build

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* Core

You need one of these systems in every LinuxMCE system. Stuff this in the closet, connect it to your router, and to your internal network switch.

2GB RAM minimum

2 Network Cards

250G disk space, minimum

If you want media on the core, hard drives for your media.

* Media Directors

You need at least one of these, to show media on a TV. For simpler setups, both the Core and the Media director can be combined into what we call a Hybrid machine.

Thanks for reading. This is all I will explicitly send you, and you are not part of a mailing list, nor part of any marketing campaign. We are not a company, and we are not trying to shill a product. We're just a bunch of very passionate enthusiasts who are trying to make the smart home platform to end all smart home platforms, and this requires a community, which requires people like you, and me to participate for the benefit of everyone.